Intel Reveals All the Ways Your Car Could Get Hacked

Car hacking has been on the public mind recently. Automakers plan on banding together to fight off the threat, but there's also a fresh and unbiased player on the field now: Intel.

"Whenever something new connects to the Internet, it is exposed to the full force of malicious activity," said Intel in a release. "When something as complex as a modern car or truck is connected, assessing the scope of threats is an immense job, and an attack surface may be left unprotected by accident." The company believes a more holistic defense approach is necessary, and shows 15 of the most hackable surfaces on a modern car.

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Intel

Protecting a car and the car's technology starts with the design. Intel believes that lessons in defense, learned in the computer industry, should now be added to automotive safety design. Services such as anti-malware, biometrics, and anomaly detection can be continually updated and keep the car's defense system as up-to-date as possible. Connecting the car's software to cloud-based security services would unify the entire process.

Intel has also highlighted the importance of supply chain security. "From a cybersecurity point of view, each operational area has different priorities with distinct risk mitigation controls," the company reasons. "Each operational area should do ongoing risk assessments independently from the others and implement controls appropriate to local operations. However, it is recommended that each area also invite peer reviews by representatives from other operations to enable coordination among functions and to promote sharing of best practices. "

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The bottom line? Cars are no longer the bare-bones vehicles you shuttle yourself from home to work in. The change in these security measures reflects the change in what the car as become, and this raises some questions that have never been asked before in the automotive scope. Do we protect every ECU, even for tiny sensors? How do we protect functions that require multi-ECU interactions and data exchange? And, of course, the longstanding question of protection versus privacy: how much privacy to we have to sacrifice in the name of protection?

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